Our Southern Union field training school efforts are to be held in the early spring each year, from about February 15 to May 15, so that the conferences will not be deprived of the help of the young workers during In-gathering time. They can return to their home fields about the middle of May and immediately take charge of a tent effort, putting into practice what they have learned in the field school. During the three months they are in this school, they are not to be tied up with money-raising campaigns, pastoral work, or the like, but are to devote their whole time to classwork and field laboratory work.
Controlling Policies
In response to requests for fuller information as to working policy, I would add the following:
The union committee at the time of the Fall Council each year will designate the local conference in which the training effort is to be held the following spring. This will enable that conference to know four months beforehand that they are to have the effort, and they can plan their program accordingly. Also, this will enable the other conferences to plan their work so that the second-year interns, or other young evangelists, and Bible workers chosen for training, can be free from other duties.
The union president, the union evangelist, and the local president, as a committee of three, will visit the prospective city, to choose the location to be used for the effort, and to make arrangements for the use of a local radio station. Those local conferences that send workers will be responsible for their salary, transportation, and one half of their streetcar fare or auto mileage in connection with the training effort.
The conference in which the training effort is held will be responsible for:
1. Furnishing all equipment for the meeting, and providing an adequate budget for the effort expense.
2. Paying 50 per cent of the streetcar fare or auto mileage of the interns and evangelists from the other conferences who help in the effort.
3. Providing a musical director and pianist for the effort. If feasible, these two may be selected from among the young evangelists and their wives.
4. Paying for a telephone for the union evangelist while with the effort, and his auto mileage for 900 miles a month at 41/2 cents a mile.
5. Providing an efficient stenographer during the effort, who will take care of the evangelist's correspondence, type newspaper articles for the local city papers from day to day, copy radio talks, etc. She will visit interested women and give Bible studies, when not engaged in this secretarial work.
6. Before the training effort is started, the conference committee of that conference in which the effort is to be held, will designate one of its capable, experienced ministers or pastors as the one to take care of and follow up the interest after the union evangelistic company leaves, this pastor to be with the effort from the beginning, so that the maximum of permanent results in increased church membership may be achieved from the effort.
The union evangelist will endeavor to make the donations in the effort cover as nearly as possible the actual effort expense. He has been named general field secretary of the union conference, with the understanding that the one thing he is to do is to hold these training efforts. But when time is available between efforts, under the direction of the union president, and in cooperation with the local conference presidents, he will help in the various camp meetings, conducting ten-day revivals or weeks of prayer in the larger city churches, at schools or other institutional centers, promoting the Week of Sacrifice, et cetera.
The union conference will be responsible for the salary only of the union evangelist in these efforts, and his traveling expenses only when he is attending camp meetings, committee meetings, general meetings, conducting church revivals and mission promotion. All traveling expense in connection with the regular evangelistic efforts shall be borne by the conference in which the effort is held.
Printed Bible Lessons
We are bringing out a brief, concise course of twenty-four Bible lessons to be used in connection with the field school. These lessons cover the essentials of Seventh-day Adventist belief and practice, and are arranged in the form of questions and answers, with explanatory notes. The lessons are printed on punched sheets, size 6 x 91/2 inches, to fit a three-ring binder which can be purchased at the ten-cent stores. One lesson can then be inserted in the binder each week when it is passed out to the young evangelists, who in turn pass the lessons on to interested people who are taking the course. First, a lesson is studied by the young ministers in a forenoon teachers' meeting, and then the same lesson is presented by them to the group Bible schools. The groups meet twice a week, on Monday and Saturday nights,—the two nights on which we have no service at the tabernacle.
The interested people who meet in these groups pay forty cents a set for the lessons. Thus the converts in our training effort really get the truth in a fourfold way,—from hearing the union evangelist five nights a week, from the free literature carried to their homes weekly by the youth in training, from the oral course of twenty-four lessons in the group Bible schools, and from the printed lessons they receive in these schools.
[A recent letter from Elder Shuler gives us this further information regarding the latest developments: "The first effort of the Field School of Evangelism was launched in a new tabernacle in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, beginning September 12. Our tabernacle, 52 x 100 feet, seats eight hunred people. On the opening night, every seat was taken fifteen minutes before the time set for the meeting to open, and about two hundred stood during the entire service. Since then nearly all the seats have been filled every night. On the second Sunday night we had two lectures to accommodate the people. At the first meeting (7 :15 to 8:20 p.m.) over a thousand were in attendance with several hundred standing. At the second session (8 :30 to 9 :30 p.m.) eight hundred were there. The young men are all taking hold in an encouraging manner. Four hundred people turned in their names in two nights. asking for reading matter on the subjects presented. We hope that the largest group ever won in one effort in the South may be gathered in through this effort. The union committee has voted that the second effort under this plan will be held in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, March 13 to June 12, 1938.